Fading Gold
by Not That Girl
Summary: See that little girl shouting, I'm king of the world? That might have been you, could have been you, should have been you.


A/N: I've nearly go the next chapter for Unicorn written out, it's jsut a little stuck right now. Please enjoy this little story-type-thing while I un-stuck Unicorn.  
  
**_  
Fading Gold_**_  
Prologue_  
  
It was a late autumn sort of day. The wind blew cheekily through the trees, scattering leaves that folk had worked so hard to organize into plies. The young woman walking through the Royal Forest smiled. This was the sort of day she liked, when you could feel the wind blowing at your face, blowing all your cares away.  
  
She breathed deeply. She shouldn't be here, she knew, but it was such a glorious day! Who could begrudge her a little time in outside? She didn't know, and she didn't particularily care either.  
  
That was why she loved days like this: she didn't have to care.  
  
_  
Linnea was fourteen. She would always remember that day; how could someone forget something like that? The day you lose your parents, the day you realize you're all alone, the day you realize that even though you're alone, even though there is no one else, that you still have to be strong, that you can't simply curl up on your bed on mourn. Because you have to lead a country.  
But she was only fourteen! How could they expect her to be Queen of Tortall when she was only fourteen? She had asked, Why not let there be a regent? Why must I be Queen?  
Because only you can use the Dominion Jewel, had come the answers. She had sighed, squared her shoulders, and wept later, in the dark of the night. She wept for her mother, who had died of the fever just a few weeks ago. She wept for her father, who had died in the Second Immortals War not a sennight past. She cried harder when she thought of the older wounds, the twins, two years older than her, who had died four years ago. How does one ever recover? she wondered. Do I learn to go on, or I do I cry each night, or do I go insane?_  
  
Walking through the Forest, she knew that in every village she passed there was a bustling of activity, getting ready for winter, preparing for the snows. She loved the snow, too: it was crisp and clean and even when it was dirty and muddied with a hundred footprints, it still seemed to be somehow clean.  
  
In part, the snow was something she aspired to be like. It didn't give up, after a few days of melting. It just kept snowing, all winter long.  
  
Why am I thinking about the snow? she speculated. She asked herself the same thing several times a day, but had never found a satisfactory answer. And yet she kept on.  
  
She waved to another traveller, walking down the same road. He returned the gesture with cheer, and her smile grew larger.  
  
_  
Eventually Linnea learned to go on, in a way. She never stopped mourning for her family, but she didn't mourn publicly. She needed the public's support, and a constantly wailing queen didn't do that -- least of all during a war.  
She wished, she wished, she wished that her father had not left her with a country being torn up from the inside. Unlike the first, this Immortals War deserved its name: the immortals were attacking Tortall, not controlled by anyone.  
At first, they had thought that maybe the new Scanran warlord had a mage who was controling the immortals. That theory was proved wrong when messages were sent to Tortall, from Scanra. We are beset by immortals. Please can you help us?  
And then messages from Tusaine and Carthak, bearing the same news. Galla had been the only one unaffected, they thought. A messenger was sent to Galla, wanting to know if they had any idea what was going on.  
The man barely returned alive. Someone had found lying on the side of a road, bleeding badly. Fortunately, a healer ahd managed to save him. But his news was uncertain for a few days, whilst everyone speculated. Had he been attacked by Gallans?  
Then he was recovered enough to tell Linnea's father his story. Galla was hardly even a country anymore. They had been hit hardest, he said. The king is dead, all the aristocracy overthrown. Compared to Galla, this war here is like a picnic in the park.  
And Linnea's father had renewed his efforts to kill the immortals.  
And he had died.  
Now she was in charge, and she had no idea what to do.  
  
She had come to terms with her grief, and she had taken up her place. She considered for months, until she reached a conclusion. This war cannot be won, she thought. We will have to come to a peace.  
And her soldiers had been ordered to not battle unless they had to. If they could, they were to tell the immortals that Queen Linnea wanted to compromise. As a result, the Tortallan immortals had part of the country. Tortall had shrunk. It hadn't been this small since before her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, King Jasson. She knew it, and her people did.  
They might have protested, but they were all too glad for the end to a bloody war. Perhaps in her grandchildren's children's lifetime they would be unhappy. Right now, they were grateful.  
Queen Linnea the Wise, they called her. A fifteen-year-old who had ended the Second Immortals War. Perhaps she was, but it was a hard-won wisdom, and one she would rather not have. And as the years passed, she gained more and more of that wisdom, and she wanted it less and less, for it was born of watching the people you love die, the country you love brought to pieces._  
  
The young woman walking through the Royal Forest was, perhaps, in her twenties. But her face was older than that. It was something you saw often on the faces of thoses Tortallans who had survived the Second Immortals War: there was not a one who had lived through that unchanged. The fighting had been on every doorstep; everyone had known someone who died.  
  
As she strolled down the path, she saw a little girl - perhaps five or six years old - finish piling a large number of leaves. The woman stopped to look, for the girl was too young to have that sense of loss written clearly on her face -- a rare thing in Tortall those days.  
  
As the woman watched, the girl climbed up to the top of her pile. Galncing around at the world beneath her, she yelled, I'm king of the world!  
  
The young woman couldn't help but think, _See that little girl, shouting, I'm king of the world? That might have been you, could have been you, should have been you, Linnea._


End file.
